Andrew Sullivan is no fan of Hillary
Clinton. He expresses his strong dislike of her in this article, but
his focus is on what a Trump presidency might mean for the future of the
nation. He says we are facing the abyss. He hesitates to use the word, but on
several occasions in the article, he suggests that Trump has the character and
attitudes of a fascist.
He writes:
The most frustrating aspect of
the last 12 months has been the notion that we have been in a normal, if truly
ugly, election cycle, with one extremely colorful and unpredictable figure
leading the Republican Party in an otherwise conventional political struggle
over policy.
It has been clear for months
now, it seems to me, that this is a delusion.
A far more accurate account of
the past year is that an openly proto-fascist cult leader has emerged to forge
a popular movement that has taken over one of the major political parties,
eroded central norms of democratic life, undermined American democratic institutions,
and now stands on the brink of seizing power in Washington.
I find myself wondering if I
have lost my marbles.
It seems far too melodramatic.
I am an emotional character — I feared that Obama might have thrown the
election away in the first debate in 2012 — and there are times in discussions
with friends when the catastrophic scenarios we’ve been airing seem like
something out of a dystopian mini-series designed for paranoids.
Please, therefore, discount the
following as the product of an excitable outlier if you see fit. I sure hope
you’re right. But as it seems more evident by the day that Donald Trump could
very well become the next president of the United States, it is worth simply
reiterating the evidence in front of our nose that this republic is in serious
danger.
This is what we now know.
Donald Trump is the first candidate
for president who seems to have little understanding of or reverence for
constitutional democracy and presents himself as a future strongman.
This begins with his character
— if that word could possibly be ascribed to his disturbed, unstable, and uncontrollable
psyche.
He has revealed himself
incapable of treating other people as anything but instruments to his will.
He seems to have no close
friends, because he can tolerate no equals.
He never appears to laugh,
because that would cede a recognition to another’s fleeting power over him.
He treats his wives and his
children as mere extensions of his power, and those who have resisted the
patriarch have been exiled, humiliated, or bought off.
His relationship to men — from
his school days to the primary campaign — is rooted entirely in dominance and
mastery, through bullying, intimidation, and, if necessary, humiliation.
His relationship to women is
entirely a function of his relationship to men: Women are solely a means to
demonstrate his superiority in the alpha-male struggle. Women are to be
pursued, captured, used, assaulted, or merely displayed to other men as an
indication of his superiority.
His response to any difficult
relationship is to end it, usually by firing or humiliating or ruining someone.
His core, motivating idea is the punishment or
mockery of the weak and reverence for the strong.
He cannot apologize or accept
responsibility for failure.
He has long treated the truth
as entirely instrumental to his momentary personal interests.
Setbacks of any kind can only
be assuaged by vindictive, manic revenge.
He has no concept of a
non-zero-sum engagement, in which a deal can be beneficial for both sides.
A win-win scenario is
intolerable to him, because mastery of others is the only moment when he is
psychically at peace. (This is one reason why he cannot understand the entire
idea of free trade or, indeed, NATO, or the separation of powers.)
In any conflict, he cannot ever
back down; he must continue to up the ante until the danger to everyone around
him is so great as to demand their surrender.
From his feckless business
deals and billion-dollar debts to his utter indifference to the damage he has
done to those institutions unfortunate enough to engage him, he has shown no
concern for the interests of other human beings.
Just ask the countless people
he has casually fired, or the political party he has effectively destroyed.
He has violated and eroded the
core norms that make liberal democracy possible — because such norms were
designed precisely to guard against the kind of tyrannical impulses and
pathological narcissism he personifies.
Anyone paying attention knew
this before he conquered the Republican Party. Look at what has happened since
then.
He sees the judicial system as
entirely subordinate to his political and personal interests, and impugned a
federal judge for his ethnicity.
He has accused the Justice
Department and FBI of a criminal conspiracy to protect Hillary Clinton.
He has refused to accept in
advance the results of any election in which he loses.
He has openly argued for
government persecution of newspapers that oppose him — pledging to open up
antitrust prosecution against the Washington Post, for example.
He is the first candidate in
American history to subject the press pool to mob hatred — “disgusting,
disgusting people” — and anti-Semitic poison from his foulest supporters.
He is the first candidate in
American history to pledge to imprison his election opponent if he wins power.
He has mused about using
nuclear weapons in regional wars.
He has celebrated police powers
that openly deploy racial profiling.
His favorite foreign leader is
a man who murders journalists, commits war crimes, uses xenophobia and warfare
to cement his political standing, and believes in the dismemberment of both
NATO and the European Union.
Nor has he rejected any of his
most odious promises during the primary — from torturing prisoners “even if it
doesn’t work” to murdering the innocent family members of terror suspects to
rounding up several million noncitizens to declaring war on an entire religion,
proposing to create a database to monitor its adherents and bar most from
entering the country.
We are told we cannot use the
term fascist to describe this. I’m at a loss to find a more
accurate alternative.
America at the abyss, and the rest
of the world is watching.